


Anything You Can Do

by igrockspock



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Banter, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22578376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: 'Anything you can do, I can do better' is not a healthy relationship philosophy - unless you’re Jim and Hikaru.
Relationships: James T. Kirk & Leonard "Bones" McCoy, James T. Kirk/Hikaru Sulu
Comments: 8
Kudos: 98
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Anything You Can Do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ictus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ictus/gifts).



Jim Kirk and Hikaru Sulu’s unhealthy competitive relationship started with a scotch bonnet pepper, an asshole named Cupcake, and a fateful afternoon of restriction -- restriction being the fancy Starfleet name for what’s basically detention with a dose of public humiliation thrown in.

Jim was on restriction for his old favorite past time, fighting. He’d gotten better over the last four years -- even Bones agreed -- but whenever he saw Cupcake, he couldn’t resist the temptation to start a brawl. 

Hikaru, Jim had to admit, had a much more interesting reason: he’d performed a highly illegal shuttle maneuver over the quad, something involving a lot of loops and also igniting fuel. Except that apparently the fuel wasn’t _supposed_ to ignite, and Starfleet had not appreciated the resultant news coverage.

Jim winked at him. “If you gotta fuck up in public, go big.”

He meant it as a compliment, but Hikaru clearly didn’t see it that way because he glowered and jerked his head toward Jim’s spectacularly black eye. “At least I didn’t lose a fight.”

“Hey, neither did I!!” Jim protested. He’d only taken the most obvious hit, which was not the same thing as losing. If anything, it was a draw; Pike had pulled him off Cupcake before a clear victor had emerged.

“Cadets serving restriction will remain silent at all times,” Commander Spock said. “Ten minutes have been added to your time.”

Jim looked out over the mess hall. Serving restriction meant standing on a platform in the middle of the room, so that everyone could see you’d messed up. It was intended as punishment, but Jim had really embraced it over the past four years. It provided an excellent vantage point for checking out the most attractive cadets.

Just then, Uhura strode toward the platform, and Spock immediately turned toward her, a fact which Jim filed away for future use. 

“Wanna make this really interesting?” Cupcake asked, prying Jim’s attention away from whatever was happening between Spock and Uhura.

Hikaru quirked an eyebrow. “You know I do.”

“Dare you to eat the scotch bonnet in my pocket.”

Jim frankly had no idea what a scotch bonnet was, why it would be in Cupcake’s pocket, or how it would make the afternoon more interesting, but he was _definitely_ game.

But the unthinkable happened: Hikaru got there first.

“I’m in,” he said, almost the instant the words had left Cupcake’s mouth. Cupcake passed something small and orange across the stage, and before Spock had turned around, Hikaru had swallowed the whole thing, stem and all.

“I can do two,” Jim said. Aside from the incident with the shuttle, Jim knew only one other thing about Hikaru: the guy had beaten him on an astrophysics exam, and he wasn’t about to lose this contest too. Whatever it was.

“I don’t have anymore,” Cupcake hissed, his eyes firmly glued to Spock’s back. Apparently he was only okay with disobeying rules if he was certain he wouldn’t get caught.

“I’ll get them,” Hikaru said. His voice sounded kind of raspy. By now, Spock had finally turned around, so Kirk was only able to glance out of the corner of his eye. Hikaru looked okay, Jim decided. Kinda red, maybe, and was that a tear sliding down his cheek? Whatever. If he was enough of a bad ass to get two scotch bonnets onto the restriction stage under Spock’s nose, then Jim was _definitely_ up for the challenge.

Ten minutes later, that thirteen-year-old Russian kid came up and asked Spock an absolutely ridiculous question about transwarp beaming, and a pilot Jim had never seen before slid three wrinkled orange peppers onto the stage.

The Russian flicked on a massive mathematical holo. Spock blinked against the glare. Jim reached for the peppers, because even if he’d only promised to do two, there was no way he was backing down from eating three.

Hikaru shook his head and snatched one out of his hand. His look plainly said, _if you’re doing two, so am I._

“Three,” Hikaru whispered.

“Two,” Jim shot back.

“One,” they said together, and Jim shoved both peppers into his mouth.

“I didn’t know my gums could catch on fire,” he said as heat engulfed his face. It didn’t taste like spice; it felt like poison was dissolving his lips, his tongue, his teeth, and probably also his entire esophagus. Any thought of standing upright and pretending to be unaffected vanished as a wave of dizziness rushed over him.

A voice from the mess hall, maybe the Russian kid, said, “I think they’re having a seizure.”

***

The afternoon ended in sickbay, with both of them begging Bones for industrial-strength antacids.

“At least our sinuses are clean,” Jim rasped from his biobed. 

Hikaru only nodded, looking miserable.

“Your digestive tract is about to get real clean too,” Bones snapped, handing each of them a whole liter of milk. “Now drink up and leave me alone.”

He wandered away, muttering to Jim and half to himself. “Competitive jackasses. Only thing worse would be if you were actually dating. Then you’d probably kill each other.”

That gives Jim something to think about.

***

Jim couldn’t just ask out a guy like Hikaru Sulu. “Hey, man, can I buy you a beer?” wouldn’t cut it for someone brave enough for illegal flight maneuvers and resourceful enough to smuggle contraband right under Commander Spock’s nose. Jim needed something bold. Something daring. Something _dangerous_.

“Hey, Bones, do you have any suction cups?”

“Jim, why the hell would I have a thing like that?” Bones didn’t even bother to look up from his reading, which was just insulting. 

Jim tossed a stylus at his head and asked, “What about a grappling hook?”

Bones finally shot him an exasperated glare over the top of his padd. “Do I _look_ like a general store for superheroes?” He sighed. “Whatever damn fool thing you’re planning, don’t do it. And when you _do_ do it, don’t expect me to patch you up.”

Jim decided, on reflection, not to admit he wanted to climb Cochran Tower, where Hikaru lived on the thirteenth floor.

***

Jim saw Hikaru the next morning at the track. He didn’t _mean_ to start the race, but Hikaru was fast, and Jim never could resist a challenge. Probably the hurdles were too big a challenge -- especially since they were the terrifying kind the computer threw into your path when you least expected it -- but Hikaru had _winked_ before he started the program, and Jim found himself nodding along.

It was, honestly, the best race of Jim’s life. Every time he edged ahead, Hikaru caught him. Sometimes Jim found himself dozens of meters behind, his chest aching, his legs quivering, and then he’d find another burst of speed and catch up.

Just when the finish line was in sight, a holographic hurdle appeared in front of him. He knew he wasn’t going to make it; his stride was all wrong, and he was gasping for air already, but he had to _try_. He leaped, and for one exhilarating moment, he was flying through the air. Then the ground was rushing toward his face, and he tried to put out an arm to catch himself, but he was too late. His hand skidded out from under him, and he landed face first on the track.

***

“Do you know the best pickup line ever invented by man?” Bones asked as he waved a regenerator over Jim’s forehead.

“Why’re there two of you?” Jim asked.

“It’s ‘is this seat taken?’” Bones continued, apparently unconcerned by Jim’s actual _medical_ symptoms. “And then you know what you do next?”

“I have a feeling you’re about to tell me,” Jim said. 

“You sit down, and you have a conversation like a civilized sentient being,” Bones said, snapping the regenerator shut. “And then, when it’s over, you say, ‘I really liked talking to you. Could I buy you dinner sometime?’ The best part is, it’s guaranteed not to end with a gaping head wound or a concussion.”

“Is gaping really the word we’d use for this?” Jim gestured at his head. It _had_ bled a lot, but head wounds do that; he’d had plenty of experience.

“Well now that I fixed it, it’s not.” He jabbed a hypo into Jim’s neck, ignoring Jim’s indignant yelp. “That’s for the concussion. Stay off your feet for two hours to give your brain a chance to heal. And try not to kill yourself chasing after your damn fool pilot.”

***

“D’you mind if I sit here?”

Jim snapped his head up from his breakfast tray and paused his music. Hikaru was standing above him, holding a tray of his own. At 0500 hours, the mess was almost deserted, but Jim cleared away his stylus and padd and a couple real paper books to make room at the table.

“Your head okay?” Hikaru asked, sliding into the seat across from Jim.

Jim felt heat creeping along his cheekbones. It was a novel sensation; he didn’t lose often, and he’d never lost anything quite as spectacularly as he lost that race.

“Yeah,” he said hastily. “Bones patched me up.”

Hikaru glanced at Jim’s comm screen. The track he’d paused -- the Beastie Boys’ Intergalactic -- was still scrolling across the screen.

“Classical music! Nice!” Hikaru beamed. “I used to listen to this stuff with my lola all the time.”

It didn’t take a genius to guess that lola means grandma. “Thanks, man,” Jim said. “I’ve never heard that one before.”

Hikaru held up his hands. “It’s not a dig, I swear. My lola’s a badass. She taught me how to fly. Of course, Public Enemy was more her thing. You know, Gotta Party for Your Right to Fight? Rebel Without a Pause?”

Jim did not, as a rule, get caught off guard. He also did not, as a rule, meet anyone who shared his rather eccentric taste in music.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know it?” Hikaru said, looking incredulous. “From a rebel it’s final on black vinyl? Tables turn, suckers burn to learn?”

The antiquated slang tripped off Hikaru’s tongue, and Jim at last summoned his patented don’t-insult-me smirk.

“Yeah, of course I know it. I’m writing my supplemental thesis on it!”

Oops. Nobody -- other than his advisor -- knew he was writing a supplemental thesis at all, much less one late twentieth century hip hop. Not even Bones. Yeah, he had the kind of straight A report card his mom could proudly display on the fridge, but that was in cool stuff, like Advanced Battle Tactics and Deep Space Survival. He’d been keeping his secret nerdiness under wraps for more than a decade, and his senior year didn’t seem like the right place to let it loose.

But Hikaru beamed. “You know, Jim, I’m really enjoying talking to you. You should let me buy you dinner sometime.”

***

Jim leaned against Bones’ desk and switched off his padd. Bones liked to pretend he didn’t study. He was always saying, “You know what they call the guy at the bottom of the class in med school? Doctor!” But then he’d hide himself in some corner to read about weird diseases you could get from wasp butts, probably just so he could warn you about them with a maniacal gleam in his eye.

“Dammit, Jim!” Bones exclaimed. He tried to turn his padd on again, but Jim was covering the switch.

“This is important,” he said, then pretended to be wounded by Bones’ skeptical look. “Did you tell Hikaru to ask me out?”

“I did no such thing.” Bones tried to swipe the padd out from under Jim’s hand, but Jim saw him coming a mile away. 

“That’s weird,” Jim said. “Because he definitely just did that whole mind-if-I-sit-here, can-I-buy-you-dinner thing you were talking about.”

“Believe it or not, Jim, my world does not revolve around you and your love life.” This time, Bones stomped on Jim’s toes and stole back his padd while Jim was yelping with indignation. “And if I _did_ happen to give him any pointers, it was only because I don’t have time to patch you up after whatever damn fool proposal you were planning with suction cups and a grappling hook.”

Jim nodded. A weird feeling bubbled up in his chest every time he thought the date he and Hikaru had planned, but it was a _good_ kind of bubbling, a kind of uncomplicated happiness that he didn’t get to feel all that often.

“Thanks, Bones,” he said.

Bones looked up from his padd this time, suspicion knitting his brow. Clearly he was waiting for the punchline, but when none came, he offered Jim a rare smile.

“You’re welcome, kid. Just try not to fuck it up, alright?”

“What does that mean?” Jim asked, although he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Fucking up interpersonal relationships was kind of his specialty.  
“I mean, you’ve already made an ass of yourself in front of him at least twice, and he still asked you out. So you don’t need to go on some damn fool quest to win a contest just to prove that you can,” Bones said, talking slowly and clearly, the way you’d explain something to a three-year-old.

Jim frowned. “You’re saying he likes me the way I am?”

Bones nodded. “Yes, Jim, that’s exactly what I’m saying. So don’t fuck it up.”

***

Jim had had a lot of grand plans for their first date -- downhill skiing maybe, or possibly space jumping from Utopia Planetia. He’d gotten pretty good at hacking free transporter credits out of the Academy system, so really, the whole solar system was a viable option.

After all that planning, he was a little surprised when Hikaru said he had a surprise in San Francisco, but he figured he ought to go along, even if he did feel a little disappointed when they arrived at a squat white building on the edge of the city.

“Hover tag?” he asked hopefully. Or maybe it was a zero-G trampoline park. Neither of those needed an elaborate facade.

“You’ll see,” Hikaru said, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Porn store?” Jim hazarded. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened on a first date, although he’d promised Bones not to repeat that with anyone he actually cared about.

Hikaru seized his hand and dragged him through a simple plate glass door before Jim could even read the name on the front. They stopped in the lobby, Jim staring at a cherry red Ford Mustang while Hikaru eyed an ancient fighter jet hanging in the corner.

“Welcome to the Twentieth Century Museum,” Hikaru said.

Jim beamed. 

There were so many things to look at -- eight tracks, roller blades, an original Sony Discman -- but Hikaru tugged him past the display cases toward a corner of the room. A rectangle of green paper sat beneath the glass. Each corner was stamped with the number 100, and a portrait of a bald man was inked in the middle.

“A real Benjamin,” Sulu breathed.

Jim nodded, the right lyrics instantly springing to mind. “I’m only here for that green paper with the eagle.”

“Cuz it’s all about the Benjamins baby.” Hikaru stepped closer to Jim, so their knuckles brushed together, and Jim looped an arm around his waist.

“You got any more surprises?” he asked.

Hikaru did that eyebrow wiggle thing again, but instead of cracking a sex joke, he gestured toward a corridor. “There’s a whole nineties wing down the hall.”

***

Great first date notwithstanding, it wasn’t a serious relationship. Yeah, it was steady and regular -- Wednesdays and Fridays without fail -- and even Jim had to admit Hikaru was a good influence. He was an adrenaline junkie, but he was an adrenaline junkie with a checklist and safety gear, so their adventures only rarely ended in the emergency room. Best of all, he was willing to sit up late at night listening to classical music, an interest Jim had thus far only shared with the father he’d never met.

But they were being smart about things. Taking it slow. They were graduating soon. Who knew whether they’d end up on the same side of the galaxy? Better not to risk disappointment. They liked each other, but they didn’t _love_ each other. Neither one of them would be stupid enough to let their feelings get so far out of hand on the eve of their possible separation.

Jim managed to fool himself until a lightning storm in space announced the arrival of the _Narada._

***

When Pike called for volunteers trained in hand-to-hand combat, Jim knew he’d see Hikaru in the shuttle bay.

“You beat me!” Hikaru slapped Jim’s shoulder and took his place second in line, and Jim’s stomach clenched. It was a weird feeling, and his mind circled around it a few times before he realized it was worry. Not for himself, of course -- he’d gotten through Tarsus and he figured he could get through anything now -- but for Hikaru. 

It was the first time he thought Starfleet might not be a game.

That thought disappeared as soon as Hikaru whipped out the katana. It _was_ a game -- one that they were winning. Every time Jim swung his fists, every time Hikaru brandished his sword carried them closer to victory. Shame and fear had been welling up in him since the disciplinary hearing. Now those feelings vanished as he imagined the two of them as the saviors of Vulcan. He’d done it: he’d beaten his father’s record and salvaged his career, all with the man he loved at his side.

Then Hikaru fell.

Jim watched in slow motion as Hikaru’s feet teetered on the edge of the drill, his arms windmilling, his mouth frozen in a silent O of surprise. He knew he couldn’t make it, but he still ran, arms outstretched, like he was going to reach out and clasp Hikaru’s hand instead of empty air.

He flung himself over the edge without a second thought.

When his arms finally closed around Hikaru, he didn’t feel victory. Just relief. “I’ve got you,” he kept saying, over and over again, more to reassure himself than Hikaru. He felt the parachute rip off his back, and he concentrated on holding Hikaru tight. If he just kept telling the _Enterprise_ to beam them up, it would happen. He believed it with his whole heart.

Hikaru gave him this awful sardonic smile and said, “First one on the ground wins.”

The world dissolved into golden light, and they hit the transporter pad at the same time.

***

Jim doesn’t see Hikaru again till the battle was over. He was splayed out in a corner of the observation deck, holding a bag of ice over one eye.

He offered Jim a tired fist bump. “Knuck if you buck, amiright?”

“Don’t think I know that one.” He flopped backward onto the couch next to Hikaru. He liked being the captain, but just now, it was nice not to be.

“2015. Probably too recent for you.” Hikaru managed a one-sided smile. “It was Lola’s favorite though. ‘We knuckin and buckin and ready to fight, so haters better think twice.’ Or something. I’m missing some words.”

Jim slumped lower so he could rest his head on Hikaru’s shoulder. “You’ll have to play it for me sometime, and tell me about your lola.”

It was nice to think there was still a _sometime_ out there for both of them. He heard Hikaru smile above him. The sound had gotten familiar over the past few months without him noticing.

“You got them to beam you us just in time.” Jim looked up, and Hikaru gave him the lopsided grin again. “I was going to hit first, you know. You just couldn’t stand to lose to me again.”

Jim pulled himself up so he could look Hikaru in the eye, even though he was so exhausted that any movement at all felt like fighting against quicksand. He was _done_ pretending this wasn’t real, that he didn’t have feelings.

He shook his head. “I don’t give a fuck about losing _to_ you. I just couldn’t stand the thought of losing you.”


End file.
